You only have to look at the graph below showing sea level rise since 1880 to see that it has accelerated from about 1mm/year at the end of the 19th century to about 3mm/year at present.(from CSIRO).

If you take a closer look at recent sea level rise you’ll see that it has been very consistent, only deviating from the trend line by about 10mm at any time.

So if you were unscrupulous, and wanted to try to make it look like sea level rise had decelerated what could you do? You could split the series at a point where sea level was above the trend line and compare trends before and after. this is what Klaus-Eckart Puls did (green line added by me):

Of course, you could achieve the opposite effect by splitting at a point in time where sea level was below the trend line. Note that the trend for the first half, 3.5mm/year isn’t significantly different from the overall trend and that the latest measurement lies on the trend fitted to the first part of the data (the green line above).

Also, you also seemed to have completely forgotten me commenting that I learned some time ago that playing at arguing academic semantics is a waste of time.

Can you give an example of ‘arguing academic semantics’ as I don’t understand what you are driving at in relation to Lotharsson’s comments.

I think I also mentioned that I don’t regard you as my lecturer or teacher

We’d gathered that, but if you paid attention to what he has to say you could become a lot better informed.

Did you notice what the qualified expert professionals were telling you in the ’70′s from my link above?

Which qualified experts, and what were they saying? Are you seriously referring to a rather notorious Newsweek article as being written by an expert? The general view amongst scientists at the time was that, after a possible cooling period, the climate would get warmer.

The bodies of water around us are definitely not rising due to thermal expansion, they are rapidly decreasing due to evaporation.

Calculate the extra amount of water lost by evaporation when the temperature goes up by a degree C, then calculate the effect of a similar temperature change on a column of water 3,500m deep (the average ocean depth). What is the overall effect? Feel free to ignore any extra rainfall resulting from the increased evaporation.

Your line was roughly that “no-one here has made any ‘obs’ to support their position”. That’s obviously cretinous as many other ‘obs’ exist and are valid even if no-one here personally made them.

And it’s even more idiotic than that – as you yourself personally relied on some other ‘obs’ earlier in the thread to support one of your embedded claims, only to (a) ignore the fact that the very same ‘obs’ refuted your main conclusion even after that was pointed out to you and (b) fall back to arguing that only personally made ‘obs’ are valid.

I take it you like the ritual intellectual humiliation you get here? It would explain a lot.

Surprise surprise! – Spangly did not watch the video. Because this would lead to the pain of cognitive dissonance.

And, wow, erosion – how did that happen? Christ, the Festival of Thick never stops…

And, what, you’re implying that they don’t want it researched because it’s not actually happening? Pffft!… You can read from your own link, I gather, he asked sarcastically because, let’s face it, you may be able to, but you didn’t bother, did you?

In order to carry out this analysis, we provide a contextual background by assessing Islanders’ recent experience with scientific researchers, and the response of policy-makers to it. We find that despite a clearly documented problem with “top-down” decision-making, this process remains. In this instance, we find that there is a systemic lack of collaboration with Islanders to allow them to prioritise their concerns, and a lack of adequate resources to allow them to build their resilience to climate impacts.

Gee, that sounds unlikely! Nope, cover-up for sure!

More bloody information for those capable of taking it in. Notice how it corroborates that the locals distrust the government’s motives in all this, but they don’t doubt for a moment that the oceans are rising?

BFPM, here we have a classic example of the locals who actually experience the effects of SLR not being in any doubt about its reality.

You wanted effects, here are effects.

I predict, however, that you’ll keep hiding behind Spangly because you have no more desire to know anything undesirable than he does… So you can steal a march on your useful idiot, and tell us all why the locals perversely didn’t bother to put their fresh-water supply out of the reach of these recent king tides if they are, in fact, precedented? Or their cemeteries, for that matter?

And another quiz question – when seas have risen half-a-metre or a full metre, as raised at the end of the lateline video I’ve linked to, where do you reckon the New Guinea lowlanders are going to attempt to flee to?

Didn’t say otherwise. (“Mainly due to one thing” does not mean “another thing has zero effect”.) But I was pointing out that you incidentally brought up a point that certainly applies in a number of places.

Similarly, reports of fresh water estuaries and groundwater supplies near the coast suffering from increasing salinity which appears to be due to sea level rise, and near-coastal farmland suffering from salinity due to more frequent/more severe seawater flooding are also relevant. (Tuvalu’s agriculture and groundwater supply are particularly affected. Other factors are contributing as well – but local sea level rises are also a major factor. Then there’s Kiribati which is having similar problems. Similar effects will be felt wherever there are coastal regions that are similarly vulnerable. Bangladesh is particularly worried, and advanced Western nations are not immune either.)

BFPM might like to pay attention to those effects as he’s obviously having trouble comprehending the other effects of sea level rise that have previously been pointed out.

I am sceptical of someone telling me something world-changing is happening if I cannot verify it.

And we’ve been down the road of pointing out that you accept the data that shows it is happening, but only when you feel the need to use it to support your argument, and then deny the data when shown that it refutes your overarching claim.

And we’ve been down the road of you arguing globally averaged changes aren’t happening because local conditions don’t match the global averages.

And we’ve been down the road, speaking of which:

If it is overpopulation that is preventing these Islands from operating as they normally would, don’t blame it on something else to suit your argument.

…of you citing one factor that contributes as “proof”, PROOF I TELL YOU, that other factors have zero impact.

Your case remains bullshit, no matter how many times you repeat it and hope it will magically transubstantiate. So I must conclude you’re not really here for the hunting.

Ritual intellectual humiliation?
Seriously?
You use such terminology yet you can’t figure out what is meant by ‘aggressively seeks equilibrium’ or ‘arguing academic semantics’?
The mind boggles
And Bill,
Where did anybody (other than you) say we shouldn’t bother with the fancy-pants research?
I also noted a a few back that you seem to think I’m fat (overfed) and I’m out to destroy the planet.
What gives you that notion Bill?
Can you quantify that statement please?
I could eat less than you and be thinner than you and use less resources than you and even maybe live somewhere that uses better and more sustainable practices than wherever you live.
I could even be carbon neutral.
How would you know Bill?
Maybe you need to cross your fingers behind your back before you make such amazing leaps of logic?

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Kevin Rudd may not be able to boast a new emissions trading scheme, but he can say he’s helping out in the neighbourhood. The Australian Government has committed $150 million to helping vulnerable South Pacific nations adapt to island change.

However, six island communities in Queensland’s Torres Strait say they’ve been forgotten in the debate. They’ve been crying out for desperately needed funds to stop erosion and inundation, but their pleas appear to have fallen on deaf ears…

Rarely do we get to see such a spectacular auto-depantsing in public. You really ain’t here for the hunting!…

And now to –

Where did anybody (other than you) say we shouldn’t bother with the fancy-pants research?

In case you hadn’t noticed the buffoon you’re championing thinks he and a handful of his cronies know more than the CSIRO. Not to mention the BoM, NASA, NOAA, and every other mere research authority. Also, in case you hadn’t noticed, he thinks the actually qualified and trained scientists at the CSIRO are ‘in it for the money’.

This means that you are a fellow-traveller of the worst kind of yokel Dunning-Krugerite conspiracy theorist!

And that’s ‘overfed’ as in affluent, smug, self-satisfied and complacent, Chammy; re-read your own posts.

You use such terminology yet you can’t figure out what is meant by ‘aggressively seeks equilibrium’…

It’s SD’s term and he relies on it so he gets to define it. What part of this is too hard for you to understand?

… or ‘arguing academic semantics’?

Don’t be silly.

It means you want to brush some inconvenient problem with your claim under the carpet by arguing that it’s not significant enough in the real world to bother with…in other words you are falling back to asserting your claim rather than substantiating it.

If you don’t trust the data, then you’ve been EXTREMELY lax because you should have been looking at this for the past 40 years. AGW was pretty much the thing from the 70’s, its effect concluded scientifically in the 1956 paper from Callendar.

And, Chammy – who doesn’t approve of Alan Jones – and the pseudo-reasonable man with the ridiculously antagonistic moniker, this is your champion? Just another mean-spirited, cranky old blowhard? What does that say about you?

You’re a hoot, spankers! Whining about common sense lacking when you have not a smidgeon of it (or at the very least allow no such compunction to get in the way of your crusade against reality)!

Truly, you fake caring about some other country’s taxpayers when money is spent on preventing disaster but didn’t go through all the “proper channels” and then resoundingly don’t care about other taxpayers (and your country will be doing the same welfare handout to the profitable oil companies too) paying money out to help some of the most profitable companies on the planet!

Raise my game?

Given your head is permanently jammed up your arse, the entire world appears upside-down to you.

You might as well save yourself further humiliation and sod off now, Spangly, because there is no way back from your performance above.

I had a suspicion that if I mentioned the Torres Strait Islands the bigotry that lies at the very heart of Australian ‘conservatism’ would most-likely reveal itself – what I wasn’t expecting was the veneer of civilization to fall away so swiftly and utterly, and for it to be vomited out in such appalling gobs.

What a humiliating and truly appalling performance. Shame on you, and shame on anyone who now tries to defend you.

So bill, when erosion, king tides and cyclones that have always happened there, and have acually done the damage yet they claim some event that is very topical but untrue to be the cause, simply because they know it is a great milking cow, you think that if you are stupid enough to believe them you also have the right to give them my money?

Well I know that is what’s going on in the climate madness of today’s world run by idiots like you but guess what? you’re fast running out of rope and it will jerk you up so short it’ll make your eyes pop..

…you’re fast running out of rope and it will jerk you up so short it’ll make your eyes pop..
Nah! Drongo. You are the ‘Ooh Me Goolie Bird’, having just hit the dirt. That classic ideological mantra gives you away.

I really shouldn’t wind you up Wow,
But a quick scan through this thread seems to show that Wow is the repetetive one who keeps making the same mistake ovef & over again.
No one is claiming AGW is wrong!
You are the one who keeps saying that.
Considering the MO appears to be that you answer each others questions:
Are you sure you meant to say YES to my question to Lotharsson?
Lotharsson went to great lengths to not answer that question and chose to give an entirely wishy washy answer to my question to David B instead.
Are you certain you deny there is a strong physical relationship between water and gravity?
Maybe you misread the question?
And please do point out where everyone is saying that AGW is wrong.

You have the most remarkable simple comprehension problem of anyone I’ve ever seen turn up here.

‘We never said it wasn’t warming!’ The last-resort strategic mantra of the Denier tribe when confronted by the latest batch of irrefutable evidence.

To be shortly followed by BAU; ‘it’s all a scam’ ‘it’s actually cooling’, and, for the truly idiotic, ‘CO2 is a harmless trace-gas / plant food and can’t cause warming.’

Nobody who hopes to maintain any shred of scientific respectability can maintain the latter in public, but this egregious, anti-scientific fatuity is widely indulged and never seriously challenged; unsurprisingly, as it’s actually the infantile rejectionist position of the majority of the ‘skeptic’ community.

If you haven’t managed to see it here – try the comments by the ludicrous Olaus on the Open Thread, for example – I can only repeat that you have a truly jaw-dropping comprehension problem.

But, in case you haven’t notice you’re here running with the pack that holds that despite the fact we know the oceans are rising, they’re not rising. Which clearly makes you a science rejectionist, too.

What silly dishonest games you play, Chameleon (so apt a moniker for a lukedenier).

If you’re rejecting what Spangled is claiming, does that mean you deny that water and gravity have a very strong and overriding physical relationship that causes water to aggressively seek equilibrium?

and

Of course there are other influences. And when other influences operate they can temporarily alter what water levels will do.

are not consistent. And since “other influences” are always operating, the SL is never constant over the globe … this is a permanent, not temporary, situation.

And

But nonetheless, gravity is the major influence when it comes to water levels.

is a ridiculous strawman … no one denies that gravity keeps the water on the crust, rather than drifting somewhere over our heads. The issue is whether the SL is everywhere the same, and the fact is that it isn’t … making SD wrong and the two of you clowns.

Sorry, given the necessity to spell everything out s l o w l y and in block letters, Olaus’ latest fatuity is actually on this thread.

This, translated into thinking-people-speak, amounts to ‘despite the clear – and statistically significant – downward trend in NH snow-cover over the last few decades I’ve neurally-outsourced the ‘thoughts’ of some idiot on a Denier blog somewhere – this is the process we refer to as “chumming” – who has pointed to the (not significant) minor uptick in December snow cover (and, note; we are not talking volume here); hence, no warming!’

This is followed by a style of hooting and capering that would embarrass a Victorian era chimpanzee tea party.

Wow,
please show me where anyone other than you at this thread has stated that AGW is wrong.
As for your question about Joan. I have not seen a pist from someone called Joan at this thread.
And Bill,
you must live on a different planet where there are no large bodies of water that stay below the atmosphere or when you drop something it doesn’t fall down.
Maybe water naturally runs uphill where you live and maybe there is no moon on your planet that dictates tides by it’s gravitational influences?
Did it possibly occur to you that without the overriding forces of Earth’s gravity and water’s physical response to that there would be no oceans and no atmosphere.
We all know that other forces can temporarily interfere with that very basic rule, but which force does water obey at the end of any temporary influences?
If it’s obstructed it will go sideways until it either breaks through or finds a new downwards path. If it is pumped we can make it go uphill until the influence of that pump has reached its limit and it immediately defaults to gravity. If a large body of water is subjected to strong winds it can be blown uphill but will immediately and aggressively return to equilibrium dictated by gravity.
Hydro power works very successfully based on this very well known relationship between water and gravity as does successful irrigation schemes as well as simple tank sytems, sewerage systems, urban water supllies etcetera.
You comment about gravity being a very weak force is highly questionable.
Especially in relation to planet Earth.

Obfuscations aside, the simple point that Ianam made is irrefutable – or not able to be credibly refuted:

…since “other influences” are always operating, the SL is never constant over the globe … this is a permanent, not temporary, situation… no one denies that gravity keeps the water on the crust, rather than drifting somewhere over our heads. The issue is whether the SL is everywhere the same, and the fact is that it isn’t .

As we have pointed out, over and over. The billiard table hypothesis is not debatable – it is wrong.

Rubbish Bill,
without gravity your photons and electrons wouldn’t exist in the form they exist and they would inter relate in a different manner entirely in the natural world.
The issue was about the physical relationship between water and gravity and so was the very simple question.

WHICH question? If you want to be understood and want to be a responsible participant you often need to be more specific. Many of your statements here are highly ambiguous. For example, even that quote can be understood as addressed to Wow (via context) or addressed to me (by name).

Lotharsson went to great lengths to not answer that question and chose to give an entirely wishy washy answer to my question to David B instead.

chameleon — No, I did not take evaporation into account. Average thermal expansion only depends upon the volume and average depth of the oceans. In actuality local thermal expansion depends upon local equivalents but the boundary conditions are too messy for me. Similarly for evaporation (which anyway depends more on wind speed than on temperature).

Are you certain you deny there is a strong physical relationship between water and gravity?

Are you certain you can define “strong physical relationship” with sufficient precision to make it a meaningful scientific question? That is a prerequisite of any attempts by you to draw quantitative inferences from the answer.

I note that you haven’t yet asked SD to define his Billiard Table Principle in sufficient detail that it can be used to draw quantitative inferences either. Similarly you apparently haven’t bothered to understand my reasons for rejecting SD’s claims about global sea level – some of which were on a quantitative basis. One almost gets the impression you are unable and unwilling to – perhaps because you know you can’t refute them.

We all know that other forces can temporarily interfere with that very basic rule, but which force does water obey at the end of any temporary influences?

1) There’s no interference. Water molecules, like ALL mass, respond at all times to all forces that act upon them. Calling other forces “interference” is a sign of unscientific thinking.

2) On earth, there’s no end to your “interference”.

Your argument is that if gravity were the only force acting, then water molecules in the ocean would fall into a nice neat arrangement that presumably you reckon supports SD’s “Billiard Table” metaphor. (And that only works to the extent that you ignore the gravitational effect of the moon.) The question is an interesting hypothetical, but we’re not talking hypotheticals. We’re talking the earth and all the gravitational and non-gravitational forces acting upon the oceans – and we haven’t even got started on temperature gradients, currents, and large scale oscillations yet…

Wow,
You’re moving into the realms of ridiculous and theoretical for some inexplicable reason.
The answer to your question is of course it’s possible because there is an impenetrable physical barrier (the bucket) which can be held in place by surface tension on a perfectly level impenetrable surface that the force of GRAVITY plays an important role.
Too bad if that surface is not level however. That bleeding obvious (but apparently weak) physical relationship between water and gravity will defeat you and the water will quite agressively run out.
What happens however when you remove the bucket and let the normal & natural forces take their course?
Does the water keep the shape of your bucket Wow or does gravity take over immediately and aggressively?
Furthermore,
It is all very interesting to look at what other forces will do apart from from gravity and I have no problem with that.
However, if we are studying the real world and modelling the real world then, forgive me for stating the bleeding obvious (as boring as that might be), but gravity needs to be IN the modelling not out.
It is indeed an OVER RIDING influence on all things (very clearly including water) in the natural world.
Water does indeed reset very aggressively to the forces of gravity when other temporary influences like storm surges etc are removed.
Or as Spangled D commented, it aggressively seeks equilibrium.
So if that is now sufficiently explained Wow (and perhaps Bill? )
Do you still deny that there is a very strong and over riding relationship between bodies of water and gravity?

Did you calculate your coefficient from measured sea levels? If so, doesn’t that take (past) evaporation into account? Of course the evaporation rate could change in the future – but only to the extent that additional water can be stored somewhere outside of the oceans.

BTW Lotharsson,
Wow’s question re ‘influence’ is a classic example of trying to play academic semantics.
At least you’re better at it than he is as you showed by your last comment
But in any case Wow & Lotharsson…..
Zzzzzzzzzzz
Very, very, very boring and a complete waste of time.
You will successfully turn this thread to the right again if you keep it up.

Wow’s question re ‘influence’ is a classic example of trying to play academic semantics.

Wow’s question re: ‘influence’ is a classic example of trying to get you to understand via Socratic means that your thinking is sloppy – if not outright wrong – and that you need to sharpen it up if you want to play with the big kids.

It’s very telling that you try to deflect that point.

It is indeed an OVER RIDING influence on all things (very clearly including water) in the natural world.

No.

It doesn’t OVERRIDE any other force – it acts simultaneously with them. It’s no wonder you believe silly claims when your thinking is so loose. You might be trying to say it’s the dominant influence on various things – which might help, because then you’d need to think about what being “dominant” means, how to quantify it, situations where that is no longer the case, …

Very, very, very boring and a complete waste of time.

Yep, that’s what many trolls say when they finally realise they are unable to defend their position. Are we to expect your third flounce now? Have you been practicing hard at home, because lots of people would be really happy if you managed to stick it this time.

chameleon — Up to a surprisingly large size a water drop is (roughly) spherical due to surface tension, irrespective of the fact it is in free fall (at the start). A water drop on a smooth surface is also a deformed sphere for the same reason.

Even in bulk a careful calculation of surface waves needs to take surface tension into account, not ordinarily done in Physics 101.

Chammy, I’m afraid your arrogance and your competence are in inverse proportion. You are remarkable, even in the murky world of ‘skepticism’, in your uncanny – and I suspect, willful – inability to ever understand the point.

So, instead of pontificating like some superannuated schoolmarm, let’s have you answer a question –

Do you deny the essential truth of what we are telling you? However many pointless semantic games you wish to play with the word ‘strong’ – and it’s one of the defining characteristics of the truly third-rate intellect that they conflate these pedantic definitional arguments with substantive ones – all the complex forces operating on the oceans ensure that the noxious Spangly’s absurd ‘aggressive’ platonic level will never occur? And that these inevitable irregular deviations away from the ‘perfect’ sphere will also vary with time and the changing regimes of these forces?

Therefore no mark on a river wall anywhere can ever disprove the notion of global median sea-level rise, a point that’s so mind-numbingly obvious that it’s hard to believe that any thinking adult could ever have attempted to challenge it.

Because, if you’re arguing with that basic principle, you’re a science denier.

It’s that simple.

Cue refusal to answer the question and further smug ‘aha!’ quibbling in 3, 2,1…

Yes David B,
I am aware of that.
Surface tension is also a measureable factor.
In Wow’s bucket example however, as it is in waves, gravity is still an important part of that equation even though it can be ‘assumed’.
Why don’t the waves stay high (with their attendant surface tension) when the forces that created them like winds and storms eventually calm down?
And David B, it may not normally be done in Physics 101, but it is not very clever to ‘deny’ what we learn in Physics 101 is it?

Chameleon, if you really want to prove SD’s argument right you need to start with at least these two things.

1) Refute the arguments against its argument.

Posing unquantified questions using undefined terms such as “aggressively seeking equilibrium” – when the very nub of the error in SD’s “argument” is failing to demonstrate the quantifiable relationship that he asserts – doesn’t get you any closer to a refutation.

(Do you see why I asked you to address my refutation, and why NOT addressing it is interpreted as an admission that you haven’t got a leg to stand on?)

2) Refute the measurements that demonstrate SD’s claim that sea level simply cannot rise at different rates in different parts of the globe.

You’re spending an awful lot of energy failing at (1), but (2) is clearly going to be much more difficult to achieve. That’s rather revealing, methinks.

Lotharsson,
From what I’ve seen at this thread, I’m sure David B is entirely capable of answering his own questions.
I also hope for David B’s sake he has a much better go at answering it.
I have no idea why you think I haven’t answered Wow’s bucket question.
Other than you continuing to play at arguing semantics.
I apologise that you find my use of terminology so terribly offensive.
But considering you are into crowing about ‘ritual intellectual humiliation’ then you would need to be ‘intellectually offended’ I suppose.

I apologise that you find my use of terminology so terribly offensive.

Offensive? No.

But sloppy. Ambiguous. Vague. Ineffective. Often misleading. Yes.

I have no idea why you think I haven’t answered Wow’s bucket question.

If you have, you are extremely stupid. Wow’s question was about a bucket that is upside down. Your answer referred to the bucket material holding the water in (and, inexplicably, to water tension). That clearly doesn’t apply to an upside down bucket – at least for the rest of us.

Well, except those pesky ones that just glide. But it’s a useful question, because it gets us one step closer:

A bird’s relationship with gravity is different to water’s relationship with gravity.

Bingo! So now we finally have a tiny light dawning in your brain.

That’s what Wow’s line of questioning has been seeking to point out. When you claim gravity OVERRIDES other forces…it clearly doesn’t in some circumstances! So…understanding ALL the significant forces acting on an entity is important. That goes for gliding birds, flapping birds, water in buckets (upside down or otherwise) – and water in oceans.

In other words, your “aggressively seeking equilibrium” argument is based on an over-simplified model of the world – and it is precisely because it is too over-simplified that the conclusion you are seeking to reach is not justified. That’s what people have been trying six different ways to point out to you (and to SD).

chameleon — If the bottom is infinitely deep a group of plane waves marches on forever. Friction at a finite depth bottom eventually puts an end to that but in the ocean not even the Pacific is wide enough for the larger waves.

Chameleon: Wow is trying to make you realize that it is possible to have water in an open bucket that is upside down, under normal gravity, and for you think about the broader implications of this regarding your claims about water “aggressively seeking equilibrium”. Do not automatically assume that the questions you are being asked are meaningless.

A bird’s relationship with gravity is different to water’s relationship with gravity.

Honestly, that might be the stupidest thing ever posted on Deltoid. Neither a bird nor water have a “relationship” with gravity, they are acted on by it. And a 1 kg bird is acted on in exactly the same fashion as a 1 kg blob of water (in an area of equal gravitational potential). Its the other forces in play (eg lift for a flapping or gliding bird) that are different.

Claiming that gravity acts differently on birds and water is a throwback to pre-Newtonian, pre-Gallilean ideas about gravity: Ita non amplitudine ponderis sed genere singularum rerum gravitatem esse non est negandum.
“So it cannot be denied that it is not the amount of weight by the specific nature of the object that gravity [acts on]”. Vitruvius, De Architectura, Book 7, Chapter 8

It’s a classic good-observation-bad-conclusion moment, since Vitruvius was confusing gravity with density. Chameleon seems to have made the same mistake – mistaking the density of his/her own posts for gravity…
boom-tish!

On the (optimistic) premise that no one could be that stupid, I suppose Chameleon will claim misunderstanding. But that’s what was written. If Chameleon wants to avoid such, perhaps more care in what is posted would be helpful…

I note that dumbo is still in denial of reality that tide gauges other than his chosen few, for example Calcutta and Manila which are part of the tide gauges set used to compile the graph at the top of the post, could possibly be right.

MeIsostasy is a principle taught in first year earth science. It addresses the bouyancy of continents with respect to the underlying mantle. I don’t have a textbook that it explains it, Can anyone help out here?

I just cracked open my 1st year textbook and it provides a good high-level description of the relationship of coast to sea level, using the concept of isostacy. “The Blue Planet: an introduction to earth system science” There is a new edition out (2011) by Brian Skinner and Barbara Murck . I recommend it to anyone who wants to get a quick understanding of how we understand the earth works.

As for the subsequent discussions on MSLR, High School Physics and Maths are a bare minimum for understanding ocean behaviour. The nuts and bolts are described in Ocean Dynamics text books which are at advanced undergrad/graduate level.